Tag: experimental gardening

Potato Peel Challenge

by sharonedgemartin

I had only five things on my to-do list today, one priority item, three important items, and one with a question mark.  Guess which got done first!

Yesterday, I canned eight jars of my Pontiac Red potatoes.  I love this variety because they’re tasty and they reach maturity before the weather gets hellish in Oklahoma.  The smooth-skinned reds steam well, and they’re lovely cooked with green beans. They hold together when boiled.

I also grow russets. They, too, are good steamed, but I like the way they break down in soups.

The Pontiac Reds canned beautifully.  I was pretty sure they would.  What I didn’t know is if the russets would turn to goop in the canning jar.  I had to find out. The priorities could wait!

Russets are tricky in Oklahoma.  They take longer than the reds to mature, and it gets hot before they get much size on them. I harvested a lot of small russets.

Anyway,  I had a question to answer and a lot of small potatoes to peel.

The first thing I realized is it takes much longer to peel a lot of little potatoes than it does a few big ones.  There’s also more waste, because the ratio of peel to potato is greater in the small ones. Little potatoes are harder to hold on to when you’re going to town with the peeler.  But I got the job done.

It was worth the effort. Canned baby russets look beautiful in the jar.

I’m thinking that next year it might be a good idea to get the russets in the ground in January or February, maybe under a thick coat of straw.  But that’s an experiment for another day.  Today, I’ve got to tackle a few more things on my to-do list.

Buying Local

by sharonedgemartin

I buy as much of my produce at the farmers’ market…actually at two or three farmers’ markets in my area…as I possibly can.  I’m not doing it to be kind, although it is a good thing to buy from local producers.  I buy local to insure that local farmers can earn something for their work, so they don’t give up farming. I need them!

For several years, I placed a monthly order with the Oklahoma Food Cooperative.  It was an Oklahoma treasure–grass-fed beef, pastured chicken and eggs, cheese and yogurt from grass-fed cows, freshly made peanut butter, locally grown and ground corn meal and flour.  And that is an abbreviated list.  I placed my last order near the end of 2018, laying in a store of staples that last month.  I miss the cooperative.

Most of the cooperative’s producers are still working, still showing up at farmers’ markets.  Most of them are too far from my home for me to enroll in their CSAs.  But they are out there.  If you are near them, give them your business.  And I will give my business to the farmers within driving distance of my home.

As the climate continues to change, and as agri-businesses corner markets, and as our president gets into trade wars and alienates neighbors who grow a lot of the produce we eat, it will be up to us to feed ourselves and our families.  Am I being gloomy?  I feel gloomy.  But my neighbors and I plant our small gardens.  I have a new asparagus bed, and the old one just produced its first stalk of the season.  Potatoes and onions are raising their green heads out of the dirt.

We raise chickens and goats and pigs and turkeys.  And some of us are experimenting with winter gardening.  We can’t control the weather, the geo-political climate, or the price of land, but we keep trying.

Where did all this come from?  Thanks, Rick Reiley, for passing on the piece from Two Sparrows Farm.  I don’t know if I agree with everything the author says, but there is plenty of food for thought here.  And, yes, we need that kind of food, too.

The End of the Road